A lot of people talk about how there is lack of innovation in the country, but rarely do we do anything about it, apart from cribbing about it. But this duo did less talking and more doing by creating Ideapoke.
Ideapoke’s vision is to democratize innovation and create a business platform that facilitates “Innovation as a Service”. It is defining the future of innovation through technology scouting for co-creation and open innovation.
Ideapoke’s online platform helps organizations to search and collaborate with technology partners across the globe to solve their R&D and product development challenges. The company’s proprietary technology uses big data analytics and matching algorithm to find the best possible solution provider.
The Bengaluru based Innovation enabler startup is Google of sorts for knowledge workers. The current market size of this opportunity is 1.5 billion globally with 250 million+ companies, 1,000’s of markets and 500 million+ knowledge workers.
Ideapoke is the first marketplace for finding innovation solutions for R&D professionals with pre–made needs database, pre–mapped industry solutions and automated re–run insight reports.
The company has been facilitating collaborative Innovation 2.0 driven by a current database of 980,000+ technologies, 76,000 companies across the globe doing niche R&D in different areas and 1900+ universities globally and at present doubles its database once in every six months.
The founders, Anup Sahoo and Sanjay Sahoo, both from Rourkela, were childhood friends who later coincidentally became colleagues working on Innovation Management Software at 3M.
The duo noticed the growing market opportunity for technology innovation, which triggered an idea to start one of India’s first firms providing technology scouting, with the world’s technology information organized on one single platform! Together, they dreamt of establishing the ‘Google for Technology information’ and the World’s largest innovation network. What excited them further was this this venture could ease the worries of an innovation starved nation.
Way back in 2010 when Anup and Sanjay quit their well-paying MNC jobs to start ‘Ideapoke’ and when spent the next one year merely developing a software, they were taking a huge career risk; for open innovation at that time was a concept that even large MNCs and corporates in developed markets like US were just beginning to consider.
Anup and Sanjay though firmly believed the risk was worth it and they slowly but surely seem to be proving it right, by establishing Ideapoke in 2011. Anup has in-depth knowledge and extensive experience across global product development space. Prior to founding IDEAPOKE, he was a solution architect with 3M, where he lead and constructed the company’s enterprise collaboration software.
Before joining 3M, he was a solution architect for TARGET and created a revolutionary technology for their supply chain segment. In his initial phases of career, Anup had worked with TCS and various growth stage startups. Anup is an Engineering Graduate in Electrical Engineering.
Sanjay is a highly articulate and knowledge driven professional specialized in IT application developments across software and IT infrastructure. He has in-depth knowledge and extensive experience across product strategy, product management, marketing, and user experience design.
Prior to co-founding IDEAPOKE, Sanjay was a senior product management specialist with Cognizant. Early stage and growth start-ups including Nirch, Convergence Infotech mark the initial days of his career. Sanjay is an Engineering Graduate in Mechanical Engineering.
By 2016, IDEAPOKE will provide over a million technology innovation listings. With Indian companies gradually opening up to and investing in open innovation in the last few years, Ideapoke today works with some of the biggest organizations across the FMCG, Manufacturing, Automobile, Consumer Electronics, Chemicals, F&B and Packaging sectors.
Describing their venture’s USP, Sanjay tells Knowstartup.com –
“IDEAPOKE is the first Indian company to provide technology scouting and ‘Innovation As A Service’,launching its next generation ‘Innovation 2.0 technology scouting platform’ that enables technology collaboration and open innovation in the industry. With a growth rate of almost 30% MoM, Ideapoke is looking to capture 20-25% of the estimated $1.5 billion revenue opportunity for open innovation over the next 4-5 years. The new platform extends clients’ ability to solve critical business and technical problems by tapping the diverse technology expertise and thinking of communities outside of a company and their own research & development environments.”
With a growth rate of almost 30% month-over-month, Ideapoke is looking to capture 20-25% of the estimated $1.5 billion market for open innovation in India over the next four-five years. The global market is estimated at $7.3 billion With an annual turnover of Rs.1.5 to Rs.2 crore. Ideapoke at the moment makes money pricing the customers.
But with an increase in traffic and clientèle, the duo plan to start a subscription for those entering partnerships through the platform. Some clients for the firm include Electrolux, Haier, Coca-Cola, Reliance, CEAT and Unilever. The firm has clocked USD 1,10,000 last quarter. Anup, says explaining the market opportunity-
At a time, when new technology is released almost every day and when each new product or device launched is packed with the latest ground breaking technology, ‘Innovation’ has emerged to become a need that has both businesses and consumers alike reach for their wallets. Today, the world’s leading corporations, Government, investors and leading technology companies value an idea against its potential for commercialization in the market and recognize that a number of such ideas can emerge only from co-creation and collaboration
